lls, and continually desolated
by winds, it is no wonder that the blue bay looks attractive, especially
to any one thrust aside in the continual vicissitudes of this unsettled
life. The first news we heard, on our return from Santa Barbara, was
that Ralston, the great banker, and one of the chief favorites in social
life, had sought the calm of its still depths as better than any thing
life could offer. How serenely the water lay in the sunshine, as we
looked at it, hearing this news, which had stirred the city to its
utmost! Here all secrets are guarded, all perplexities end. The passion
for suicide seeks mostly this pathway, though there is an unprecedented
number of intentional deaths of all kinds.

This morning's paper records the suicide of a Frenchman, who half
reconciled me to his view, by the cheerful, intelligent way in which he
spoke. He left a letter stating that he died with no ill feeling toward
any one, and full of faith in God as a Father; that he did not consider
that he was to blame for what he was about to do, as he had tried in
vain to get work,--probably because he was wholly deaf. He made so
little fuss about what almost every one would have considered a terrible
calamity,--that his life should end in this way,--that it seemed a pity
it could not otherwise have been made known what kind of a man he was.
He gave a little account of himself, beginning, "I was born in the
province of Haute Vienne, in France, and have lived mostly at the
mines," going on to speak as quietly of what he was about to do, as he
might if he were going to move from one town to another, not having
succeeded in the first; ending by saying, "I have taken the poison,--an
acid taste, but not disagreeable." He made only one request,--that a
package of old letters should be laid on his breast, and buried with
him. A valuable member of society might have been saved, if the result
in his case could have been the same as with a man we knew in Santa
Barbara, who, becoming discouraged by continual rheumatism, combined
with poverty, took a large dose of strychnine, with suicidal intent,
but, to his astonishment, was entirely cured of his rheumatism; and the
notoriety he acquired presently procured him an abundance of work.

In the winter a man who called himself Professor Blake, a "mind-reader,"
gave some exhibitions of his power, which were considered wonderful. It
might have been better for him, however, not to know what people
thought